PARASITES ON PLANTS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXI, Issue 21698, 13 January 1934, Page 12

PARASITES ON PLANTS

COASTAL LUPINS AFFECTED COMBATING WHITE BUTTERFLIES [BY TELEGRAPH—OWN CORRESPONDENT] PALMERSTON NORTH, Fridny Recent visitors to the seaside resort of Paraparaumu, 33 miles north of Wellington, observed that lupins which originally had flourished along Marine Parade, in the centre of the settlement, have been dying out, apparently as a result of attention paid to them by a parasite or grub. The unwelcome parasite is not a newcomer, its activities having been well known previously. It would now appear as though it has merely transferred for feeding purposes from a recognised list of plants to another of tho same order.

The parasite which has been responsible for the damage at Paraparaumu has been identified as Meeyna Maorialis, which feeds on kowhai, cape broom, common broom and clover, but to this list can bo added lupin. Last season several cases of depredation among lupins growing along the coast were reported to the entomologist at the research station at Palmerston rvorth, but no serious development arose. It is not thought in the meantime that anything untoward will materialise this year. Although the white butterflv pest has been kept somewhat in check this season by the weather, the authorities recognise that the pest still flourishes. Ihe entomologist at the Palmerston Aorth Plant Research Station, Mr. J. Muggeridge, is busily engaged developing parasites to combat the white butterfly. These parasites were sen to the Dominion in the chrysalis stage, and recently some of them were liberated at Bulls, but the authorities are concentrating on Hawke's Bay, where past experience shows the greater danger to rest.